Cyclops Heater Block (32x14x13.45mm)

Next lets take a closer look at Cyclops. In Greek mythology the Cyclopes were a race of one-eyed giants who were famed for their ability to build impressive structures. This is of particular relevance to our Cyclops product, which although not a giant in size has a single output nozzle and is certainly capable of building some impressive structures!

During our experiments with colour mixing we noticed that it was, in fact, possible to switch from one solid colour to another. The mixer disengaged extremely quickly with a very low amount of purging and colour bleeding if the internal channels for the molten polymer were correctly arranged. Although we’re still working on getting colour mixing nailed, we saw a lot of potential utility in being able to switch from one solid colour to another rapidly through a single nozzle.

Cyclops uses the exact same heatsink as Chimera, which means you get the same small footprint, easy mounting and air cooling. It also means that a Chimera can be converted into a Cyclops and vice-versa. It’s also a pretty rapid changeover so it’s perfectly feasible to have and use both. We offer a “Legendary Kit” which will include all the modular parts you need to create Cyclops and Chimera, allowing you to chop and change to suit your needs.

Cyclops uses its own 0.4mm nozzles as well as heatbreaks with spanner flats so they can be tightened into the block. It of course also has a weird and wonderful block with a labyrinth of small channels through which the molten polymer flows, meets, and eventually ends up exiting the nozzle.

We ran into a few tricky problems with this block. The first was the nozzle: Using a v6 nozzle was off the cards - the fluid dynamics just didn’t work out. Initially we were going to orbitally mill a nozzle into the block as a one piece affair, but eventually we managed to come up with these little nozzles which we’re really happy with.

Compatible with:

We’re also really really pleased with performance, colour switches happen FAST. A small purge of 30mm^3 clears out the previous colour and brings in the next one. We’re using Cura for slicing which is simple to configure for dual extrusion and has really intelligent dual extrusion path planning. Because there is only one nozzle idle nozzle ooze is eliminated and no ooze shield is needed. We’ve been tackling some really challenging dual extrusion prints with great results.

With all the above said, there are some caveats to the use of Cyclops. Both filaments absolutely must be present in the heatbreaks before extrusion starts, otherwise there is nothing to block off the empty heatbreak and molten polymer can flow up and out of the open hole. This is not a fun occurance. This also means that during printing the idle extruder must only be allowed to retract by around 2-3mm, not the more standard 10mm or so or the same issue presents. Additionally the pressure required to extrude is a little higher than a standard hotend - we’ve been testing with direct drive airtripper extruders with acceptable results, but we really recommend the use of a geared bowden extruder such as RichRaps geared bowden extruders to ensure that the system always has enough force available. Cyclops only has a single block which melts and holds both materials. This obviously excludes the use of 2 materials with drastically different processing temperatures. We’ve not done extensive enough testing with different materials to make assertions about performance, but we expect that with appropriate purging and on-the-fly temperature changes it should be possible to print polymers with somewhat different processing temperatures in a single print.